Shared Reflections

Artists Statement:

Shared Reflections is an exploration of the development of identity, personal history, and interpersonal influence. It is also an act of creation, a birthing of new personalities. Every aspect of our personalities is a result of the people and experiences that have come before in our lives. We are formed by the combined influences of hundreds of other people, and millions of incidents, which have shaped us in small ways. Shared Reflections seeks to illustrate this quality of a patchwork identity through the symbol of a broken mirror, each shard reflecting a different part of the person reflected. In doing this, I also seek to create new identities through the amalgamation of many different people.

Many of the fragments in this project are unidentifiable, too small or indistinct to reveal specifically whom they came from. This is, in part, because most influences are small, bringing about subtle changes in a person. The fragmentation reveals qualities about each of these created personalities. Characters portrayed with larger fragments might be more reclusive, having only a few friends who shape their actions in major ways, while those with many small fragments might be more outgoing, allowing a wider range of influences, but allowing each to affect them in a smaller way.

Shared Reflections is about more than just creating new identities, it’s also about finding old Identities, both within the images and within ourselves. These faces I have created resemble people who were never included in the project. This is because when we are confronted with something new and strange we seek out the familiar. These faces function as a reminder of those whom we know, who played some part in our lives before. It was thrilling the first time I assembled an image and realized that I was looking at the face of my brother, whom I never photographed for this project. Afterward, it was exciting as others pointed out images I’d made that resembled people from their own pasts, whom I had never met.

These images serve as narrative portraits of the characters’ lives and influences.